Mad enough to protest - OWS

Mad enough to protest [ OWS ] Originally published November 11, 2011 The Frederick News-Post By Steven R. Berryman

You know they are mad because they act out, shout and misbehave. They resist authority, want to do things their own way and live in their own world! Nope, I'm not talking about your pre-adolescent children, I'm talking about the various protest movements; some have already changed the world. Some of these "children" are more mature than others. Various degrees of lasting success ensued. The feminists burned their bras and pushed against the glass ceiling of workplace bias. They wanted all of the benefits of being a man, plus retain all of the inherent rights of being a woman in American culture. Today we hold open the limo door for some of them, and others are distraught that they "also have to be the men." Gender definitions and roles in marriages and households became forever confused and overlapping, for better or for worse. A mixed win, in my book. The civil rights movement leveled income disparity in some cases where racism was a factor, and actually gave benefit to those with more color in their skin through affirmative action programs and LBJ's Great Society. Wealth redistribution begat "entitlement" in part, and the bill is due today. The anti-war movement drove the awareness that America was stuck in an unwinnable war with questionable motives and a lack of political will to follow it through. This hastened the end of Vietnam, and also provided for lots of wild parties and opportunities to meet girls. After all that, we still made the Iraq decision falsely. So much pot we forgot the lesson? Several years ago the tea party became an activist group, originally upset with how they were being treated by an overarching government. Health care became Obamacare for unsubstantiated reasons, taxes kept killing the middle class, and the states were being overrun by an all-powerful central federal government characterized by "ruling by executive decree," and by Cabinet officers replaced by "czars," effectively adding to the lopsided powers of the executive branch. Protests were criticized and discouraged by an angry media that wanted tea to fail. They miscounted rally totals, focused on fringe behaviors, and claimed the movement was "not of the people." Today, literally, Occupy Wall Street will flirt with Frederick at a meeting, "The local forum on economic injustice," for an open mic, and all are invited. Doors open at 5 p.m., Parish Hall of All Saints' Episcopal Church, whose entrance is the big green door between 19 and 25 N. Court St. There's more in common than not between tea and OWS, going back to the origins of all of the great movements. A unity at some level between these two groups is urgently needed to slay a dragon the size of ours; don't let them divide us as a nation for easy pillaging! Being "mad enough to protest" can be the beginning of where we come together. Please examine critically the forces that benefit from keeping us apart. -- Steven R. Berryman writes from Frederick. (srbmgr@comcast.net)

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